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Yesterday, I arrived home from the most amazing weekend on Kiawah Island, about 40 minutes from Charleston, South Carolina. My family gathered together to celebrate my aunt’s 50th birthday in one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever had the opportunity to stay in. We kayaked on the marsh, enjoyed time on the beach, and on Saturday night, threw a proper birthday dinner for my aunt. Naturally, I asked if I could be in charge of decorations.

Since the setting was naturally beautiful, I kept the decorations simple and easy. I used the theme of magnolias and pineapples (because we’re in Charleston, of course). For the tables, I ordered a blue “painted check” paper table runner online at Hester & Cook, and we purchased three pineapples with good tops. My mother already had gold candle votives that she brought from home, and she also cut a few magnolia branches from her neighbor’s yard.

To add a personal touch, I created this banner with pictures of my aunt over the years. I saw the idea of adding paper hats on Pinterest. (I mean, it does make it really cute.) And I added a line of rick rack for an extra touch.

By keeping the table simple, it was so easy and quick to set up, and by using a paper runner, it made it extra easy to take it down. (Plus, you can cut up the pineapple and have it for breakfast the next day.)

Because every birthday party needs a good “Happy Birthday” banner, I made this one with pineapples to really drive home the theme. I simply used yellow and green card stock. I also used a ruler and a gold paint pen to create the criss-cross detail.

As a final detail, I set out a tray of pictures that people could pick up and flipped through when they were grabbing a drink. My grandmother helped collect them together, even finding a picture of my aunt at her first birthday… which I framed for the occasion.

The party was a grand success! But let’s face it, when you are in such a beautiful place like Kiawah Island, South Carolina, it would have been hard to not have a wonderful time.

Lately, I have a new obsession with felt masks for kids. It all started when a friend asked me if I could help her with her baby’s Halloween costume. She was dressing her baby as a bald eagle. (Get it? Because she’s bald.) I helped by creating a mask out of felt that the baby would wear more like a headband. I don’t want to post a picture of my friend’s baby without her permission, so you’ll just have to trust me, it was adorable!

And as things can go for me, I quickly became obsessed with the idea of creating felt masks for kids, and the Internet has so many ideas to share with me!

My niece and nephew live abroad, and typically when I want to buy them presents, I shop through Amazon because, at the end of the day, the shipping is cheaper. But I think what spurred my obsession was the thought: Felt masks are going weigh nothing! They are going to be so cheap to ship overseas!

So one Saturday, I sat down and created six felt masks—three for both my niece and nephew. For the most part, I found some sort of inspiration online and then freehanded the whole thing. The blue bird was my most abstract mask, but it turned out to be my favorite.

Sure enough, once wrapped and packages in a mail bag, the total weight was less than a pound. It was the cheapest present I’ve ever sent to Europe. My intention was to send them as Christmas presents, but one day in mid-December, I got a text from my sister-in-law with a few pictures and the caption, “I’m so sorry, but we just couldn’t wait!”

This visual activity schedule for kids was a custom order for a friend of a friend, and looking back over these images, I realize that the person who purchased this got quite the deal. (Aka I charged way too little… which is the story of my business life.)

I am beyond proud of this project. I love how it’s colorful. I love that it’s made out a felt. And I love that I took the extra time to make this banner sturdy—with the hopes that it not only survive one child but could possibly be passed down for the use of a second or a third.

The idea was provided by the customer. Her son thrived under a routine, and she found that their days progressed better when he understood, to a point, what to expect. She provided the individual prompts—signs for lunch, playtime, bedtime, snack, etc. We made sure there were enough signs to make it through the hours of the days, plus extras… because obviously, you need some variation within the week.

She asked for the day to start at 7 and end at 7, and then I came up with the rest from there. The trick was trying to figure out how to visualize 13 hours on a banner without making it enormous. Though the problem quickly resolved itself when I realized I would need to create some sort of pocket to store the little signs. I created two columns with seven panels each.

Before finishing the banner—using quilting techniques like binding—I attached magnet snaps to the banner along with the signs. Since felt is a soft fabric, I worried that the act of pulling the signs off the banner each day would quickly wear on the fabric, so I made sure each magnet had a backing of thick cardboard.

I designed the banner so it could be hung on the wall and easily used by a child. Plus, I just wanted it to look good. Knowing it was for a boy, I used lots of blues and greens. But you could easily use different color palettes, like purple and blue, yellow and navy, pink and more pink!

All of the signs were hand sewn, but I did use a sewing machine for the banner.

… Yeah, I definitely should have sold this for four times the price I charged. Oh well.

My nephew Josiah is just the coolest kid because he has the most amazing imagination. When he was like three or four years old, I really wanted to create a podcast where it would be just me and him talking about stuff. At the time, you could bring up any topic and he would have an opinion about it—despite knowing nothing about it. His imagination would just run wild.

One day the idea came to me—I would ask Josiah to draw a treasure map on a square piece of canvas fabric, and in the weeks that followed, I would embroider over the lines, making his map a permanent, one-of-kind piece.

Together we sat down at my parents’ dining room table. I started by drawing the treasure chest, and I let Josiah take it from there. Though I didn’t want to be too influential in his drawing—as I wanted it to truly capture Josiah’s imagination at the time—I did encourage him to change colors every once in a while. (Selfishly I had envisioned this being a colorful piece.)

After he finished drawing, I had him identify everything, which turned out to be the cutest part of the whole thing.

When I started this project, I thought the embroidery aspect would only take me a few weeks. Well, despite my best intensions, it ended up taking me several months.

One thing I decided early on is I wouldn’t care about being consistent with the embroidery floss. I easily could have stock piled the same color of blue embroidery floss to use throughout the project, but I decided I didn’t want to buy anything for this. Instead, I just used the collection of thread I already had.

I think this choice added to the overall adorableness of the map.

I also didn’t fret too much about my stitching. For the most part, I kept the stitches short, and I didn’t worry about completely covering all of Josiah’s drawing. I was okay if a few ink marks peeked through.

To finish it, I cut a piece of blue fabric as the back piece, and I used the quilting technique of binding to create a solid edge. While I created this piece for Josiah to play with—thinking he would roll it up, carry it around and use it in his pretend play—I also think it would be an adorable idea to frame the piece and use it as decoration in your house.

Earlier this year, my mom accepted a position as a director of children’s ministries at a church near their house. With Halloween approaching, she began planning her first-ever Trunk or Treat event. And since Mom was in charge—and Dad and I are people who don’t like to be outdone—we brought our A-game by creating a monster-sized idea.

We used his truck to create a larger-than-life Cookie Monster display. (And I’ll go ahead and spoil the ending for you, we took home the top prize!)

I love creating projects with my Dad because he always brings out the power tools. We started the display by creating the wood frame. His truck bed had two notches along the top that could fit the legs of our frame, helping it stand up. (I’m not sure what the technical name or use of these notches are. Sorry, I’m not a car person.)

Once the frame was complete, we wrapped it with cheap blue fabric we found at Walmart. (The key to creating Cookie Monster is all about finding the right color blue.) We ended up letting the blue fabric hang low to cover up more of the truck.

Note: I love the picture below because it shows how exacting my dad is. We couldn’t just cut out a circle. We had to use an Xacto knife.

I used black fabric (the same cheap fabric as the blue) to cut out a mouth, and we used poster boards to create the eyes. We decided to not attached the eyes until we actually got to the event because we thought there was a high risk they could be damaged in the drive to the church. But I attached the black fabric mouth with spray fabric adhesive.

With the display complete, the next step was to create the corresponding game. In the church’s storage room, my dad found a wooden bean bag toss board. He brought it home and covered it with blue felt. I create a similar black mouth out of fabric, and we created another pair of the eyes.

Finally, I made felt cookies as the bags kids would toss into Cookie Monster’s mouth. At the local Walmart, we found 1-pound bags of beans, and I stuffed the felt cookies with the bags as-is. (Aka I didn’t open the plastic, keeping it as the container for the beans.)

Like I said at the top of the blog post, there was a contest for the best display at the Truck or Treat. We won!

It’s been a year and a half since I logged into this WordPress site, and this great hiatus is not because I’ve stopped crafting. Goodness, no. But instead, I let this project that once brought me tremendous joy sail away with other seasonal life interests. I could blame the busyness of work or that I’m now taking graduate classes at night. But in truth, I think the joy that led me to create this blog began to fade a year and a half ago, making a fun side hobby feel more like work.

Well, as some people say, never throw anything away because its bound to come back in style.

Over the Christmas break, I was inspired to read through the countless blog posts I have here. Of course, it’s a little embarrassing to see how many spelling and grammatical errors exist (and I’m sure there are a few in this post too), but the walk down memory lane was fun. At the same time, I was creating felt stocking for my parents, using patterns/kits by Bucilla.

Christmas was a little different this year for my family. My mother was recently diagnosed with cancer, and two weeks before Christmas, she underwent a very intensive surgery that caused an extended hospital stay. My parents live in Georgia; I live in Alabama. So for several weeks, I made the trip back and forth.

As I’ve said on this blog before, my mother has the best advice, and her crème de la crème is this: Know what makes you happy, so when times turn sad, you have tools you can use to lift yourself up.

My greatest tool is crafting and sewing… and a whole of prayer. I can’t remember when the idea came to me, but I know this project of creating felt stockings was one of the greatest blessings during this difficult time.

Not only did the kits throughly entertain me during a time where there was a lot of sitting around, but they able gave me a focused line of thought on something positive and beautiful.

I finished my dad’s stocking before the surgery, and I worked on my mom’s throughout her recovery in the hospital. Once it was finished, I was able to hang it on her wall, adding a bit of Christmas decoration to her small hospital room.

And I will note: the kits were amazing portable. I utilized small jars to organize the beads and sequins, using a magnet on the underside of the lids to store the sewing needles. I was able to contain everything I needed in a single freezer zip lock bag, so no matter where I was—siting at my craft table, the floor of a waiting room, the chair in the hospital room, etc.—I was able to work on it.

Mom ended up leaving the hospital on Christmas afternoon, and in the following days, we opened presents and tried our best to celebrate a normal holiday season. The new stockings for Mom and Dad hung on the mantle with the felt stockings Mom made for me and my brothers when we were born.

I’ve been writing a lot about this season I just experienced, mainly in Word documents that one day may see the light of day. In doing so, I felt the joy that I once had for this blog rising back up with in. So here I am, back for reading pleasure. The good news is, I have a lot of content from the past year and a half that I can share with you. I hope you enjoy.

Felt and woodland creatures are a pretty adorable combo! I created this sweet baby mobile for friend preparing a nursery for her son. The theme: animals.

I’m pretty proud of this project because I created the animals without templates. It took me a couple tries to get the right look, especially for the raccoon, but that’s why we sketch things out.

Once I was happy with the sketches, I used them as a template to cut out the felt. Working with a front and back piece for each animal, I added details, sewed the pieces (right sides) together and used fiberfill to make them slightly plush.

To create the mobile, I initially thought I would use an embroidery hoop for the structure. But then I found this piece of wood at JoAnn Fabrics, and I thought it really added to the “woodland” theme.

I forgot the technical name of the hooks I used, but they screwed into the wood board really easily. I used twine to hang the animals. I even added a few felt leaves as an final touch.